Re: [racket-dev] Implementing a spell checker in DrRacket

[Leif Andersen]

Fun fact, DrRacket already has a spell checker. It's not the best thing ever, and it also requires you to have a/ispell (or whatever it is) installed, but it gets the job done for some use cases.

You can get it by going to:

Edit -> Spell check string constants

Edit -> Spell check text (between {} in scribble)

You can tell it's working because if you have a word misspelled in a drracket string, it will be black instead of green.

Enjoy.

~Leif Andersen

On Mon, Dec 5, 2016 at 4:08 PM, <jer...@g.clemson.edu> wrote:

Hi Racketeers,

I'm planning to implement a spell checker in DrRacket.  I have two main concerns I'd like to raise with you all before I get in too deep:

• Is there anyone else currently working on this?
  
• I need help understanding what legal and licensing issues there are by using the ispell ( https://lasr.cs.ucla.edu/geoff/ispell.html ) source code as a reference.  I use the word "port" in parenthetically below because I'm using details learned from the C source to implement the Racket code.   Maybe its a matter of asking the maintainer of ispell what to do? I don't know.

The idea came from the wiki,

> Write a parser for ispell dictionaries. Make DrRacket use it.

(from https://github.com/racket/racket/wiki/Intro-Projects)

I've made enough progress writing the ispell dictionary parser that I feel confident this is a project I can complete with a little help from the community.

Here is a 50,000 foot outline of the work I have planned:

1. Finish writing (porting) the ispell dictionary hash parser
2. Write (port) the spelling corrector engine
3. Solicit feedback from the Racket community regarding DrRacket feature details like the following,
1. How should a misspelled word look in DrRacket? 
2. How does the user want to control the spell checker?  
3. Should it check word in function names, or just inside strings or scribble text blocks? 
4. etc.
4. Implement the DrRacket integration using feedback from (3).
5. Put up a PR!

Thanks,

Jerry

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[jer...@g.clemson.edu]

Leif, Wow, I'm not sure how I missed that it already has the feature :/. Thanks!

~Leif Andersen

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[Robby Findler]

You are welcome to try it out and improve it! It is pretty bare bones.

Robby

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[Jens Axel Søgaard]

> Den 5. dec. 2016 kl. 22.12 skrev Leif Andersen <le...@leifandersen.net>:
>
> Fun fact, DrRacket already has a spell checker.

Does it call ispell or simply use the dictionaries?

/Jens Axel

[Robby Findler]

It uses aspell.

Robby

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[Jens Axel Søgaard]

Ok - so a Racket implementation would be a Good Thing (TM). 

[jer...@g.clemson.edu]

Ah, I see now, DrRacket currently calls out to the i/aspell binary on the user's path, I thought it was bundled up somehow.  I tested DrRacket's spell check on my fedora system yesterday when I saw Leif's response, and it just worked because ispell was setup correctly.  Later I tried it on my mac and it failed, then I realized I misunderstood what the situation is.

Ok! I'll keep working on the native implementation in that case.

RE: Licensing issues that may be caused by porting from the C source; I guess for now i'll just keep a bibliography of sorts that provides tracability from the Racket source to the C source; later, I can figure out how to properly give credit to the appropriate people.  Does this sound OK? 

[Leif Andersen]

Oh ya, if you are making a racket version that would absolutely be a good thing.

Especially because, from my experience, getting the spell checker to work on windows is a bit of a nightmare.

~Leif Andersen